--As of posting here, this writeup is still a WIP because it's very lengthy as I put a lot of detail into it. There will be multiple edits to come if this message is still present--

My friend brought me three stock, old-style Supermaxx 1500s to work on. I fell in love with these blasters as soon as I messed around with them a bit, they're incredibly cool and one of my favorite blasters. He gave me one to keep, which I modified, and learned a couple things NOT to do which weren't present in a lot of writeups. Additionally, there's no single, detailed, writeup on overhauling a Supermaxx 1500 that describes and instructs how to do everything AND how NOT to do everything.

I'm here to impart the knowledge I gained by screwing over one of the Supermaxxes and then figuring out how to fix it. I'll be doing a writeup in the following style:

>Tutorial on a modification

>Problems that can arise from a modification

>Diagnoses for the problems

Let's jump in.

Step 1: Open your blaster.

The screws on the pump handle are irrelevant and do not need to be taken out. The only issues you will face when disassembling your Supermaxx for the first time are two caps, shown here:

They will need to be cut or pried off, unless you want to dip them in boiling water or find some other way of dissolving the glue to remove them.

The other issue will be glue at the top of the orange reservoir. You may just use leverage and gently snap the pieces apart, however, that poses a risk of breaking or creating stress marks in the plastic around there, so I recommend the boiling water treatment beforehand or using some sort of blade to separate the pieces more gently.

Internals

These are fairly simple. Refer to these before reassembly of your blaster. Nothing here is small enough to have a large risk of misplacement other than the trigger spring which is not pictured. Familiarize yourself with the air tank, turret, and trigger locations before moving on with your modification.

Turret Modification

This is the most extensive, difficult, and tedious section of this blaster. It's such a large portion that you could do it, put the turret back in the blaster, and be getting 80 feet flat. Don't get lazy though; this is by no means a beginner modification and should be handled with great care.

DisassemblyStart by lifting the turret out of the blaster. It's not held in by anything.

- Moving to the back, rotate the barrels while keeping the back stationary until the holes line up with the screws. Hold the turret upright while removing the screws so they will fall straight down, otherwise they are liable to get lodged in the rotation mechanism and can mar the plastic during a later step.

- Pull the black barrel spacer off.

- Remove all barrels from the turret, by gently wiggling them and pulling upward. In the case that they are inseparable from the turret, hold them in boiling water for 30 seconds while taking care not to burn yourself. Wait 2-3 minutes after taking them out of the boiling water before attempting to remove the barrels again, as the plastic will be both extremely hot, and as such, pliable - you do not want to deform your turret or barrels.

Your turret will look like this from the front after the barrels are removed.

You may set the turret aside for now.

- Grab your barrels. You will notice on the bottom, there is a "cap" of sorts, visible due to the seam in the plastic.

- Using a saw of some sort (I recommend a bandsaw or scrollsaw), nestle the blade in that seam and cut along it.

View from the back, post-cutting:

- Grab a 9/16" spade bit (Can be found for roughly $3.50 at your local hardware store) - The central "spike" will fit into the hole of the barrel, and with a little wiggle you can easily center it perfectly. I had the best results here with a spade bit, you may prefer a different style.

Clamping down a barrel in a vice or onto your table will make this job much easier to get done perfectly. The hole does not have to be clean on the inside, but it's important to get it as centered as possible (If it's off by too much, you can always fix it with different methods, but that adds an extra amount of work.

This is what my barrel looked like after I did a small amount of drilling with the spade bit. I switched to a standard 9/16" bit afterward and gently rotated my drill to ream out the inside slightly.

- Take a pair of scissors and keep reaming out the inside of the barrel. Your goal is to get PETG to fit inside of it very easily, loose enough that you can push it in with the pressure of your pinky finger, but will stay put if you let go of the PETG and just hold the barrel itself. Do this with all four barrels, testing them all with PETG.

Once that's done, you can set your barrels aside and grab the turret again.

- Move to the back, find the pin with the spring on it, and pry it off as gently as possible with a small pry bar, or a claw hammer. This will take a lot of force, be careful not to bend any of the plastic. Separate all parts of the turret.

Bonus: If you see the faint line on my thumb, that's scarring from the vague knife accident I mentioned in the FU shoutbox.

- Grab the barrel section of your turret. Start by widening the holes with a bit slightly larger than the holes themselves, I believe the one I used was 3/8". Then move up to 1/2" and drill it out again. Drill from the front, it's the easiest.

Before:

After:

- Move to the back, and you'll find that these walls have been decimated by the drilling.

You're going to grab a pair of needle nose pliers and break those all off, then clean up with an X-Acto knife.

- Next, from the front again, drill it out with a 9/16" standard bit. Ream that until PETG will fit in firmly, but NOT warp. This is imperative. PETG, being a loose barrel, has space around your dart. If there is warping, that holds your dart in with more friction and will have larger spaces around it for air to escape. Your dart will simply not leave the barrel on the first shot, but will shoot fine the second time, as shown here:

[Video will be inserted here prior to completion of the writeup]

This is an example of bad barrels - notice the very light oval shape on all of them. That's enough to ruin your firing.

- After you've ensured the barrels have no warping (Common cause for warping is the circular wall of the rotation mech, you may need to file/grind that down a bit), have them protruding slightly from the back of your turret.

- Set the turret down on a hard, flat surface, and press the stock barrels on.

- Add the black spacer.

- You're not going to be able to get it on there with your hands, so put a screwdriver through (Has to be a large one that can't be easily bent) and push down hard on the head and handle.

Kind of a pain, but damn is it satisfying when that thing goes on.

(Note for the next step - I use Vis-a-vis markers for all the marks I make and recommend you do too, do yourself a huge favor and pick these up)- Once that is done, go to the top of the barrels, and make marks on your PETG with a washable marker where the ORANGE BARRELS end, then disassemble your turret again.

- Lightly wrap the PETG with masking tape BELOW the mark you made (If you wrap it tightly, you're going to warp your PETG and cause the same problem with pinching) until it has little wiggle room in the wider diameter section of orange barrel - This helps keep the PETG straight, and you'll want the wiggle room for when you put your barrel spacers on as the stock barrels are not perfectly straight, and you don't want to bend your PETG when you put the spacers on. The tape is just to help them face the correct direction.

Currently DRAFT 1. There will be more steps added and pictures added where necessary tomorrow.

This is the end of the first draft. Last edit: 1/6/2015 07:23 CST -6GMT

KIDD [01|Dec 04:17 PM]: Chuck TestaAmbience 327 [02|Dec 09:13 AM]: At first I read that as "Chuck Tesla". I thought the world was about to explode, as someone had finally combined the bearded awesomeness of Chuck Norris with the scientific awesomeness of Nikola Tesla...